Caroline YEOH received her doctorate in 1988, and has the distinction of being the first Asian woman to receive an MSc and DPhil in Development Economics from the University of Oxford. She held various faculty positions in National University of Singapore from 1988 to 2000, and in Singapore Management University from July 2000 to December 2014. She has written extensively on Singapore's development strategies, growth triangles and transborder industrialization in the context of Singapore's industrial/IT parks in Indonesia, Vietnam, China and India. Her other research interests include the internationalization strategies of Asian business groups, and Singapore’s business interests in the Middle East.

She was a recipient of the ASEAN Pre‐University Scholarship, as well as the Leeds University Crabtree Award and the NUS Overseas Graduate Scholarship. She was a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Queen Elizabeth House‐International Development Centre, a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University’s Faculty of Social & Political Sciences, a Visiting Fellow at The London School of Economics and Political Science’s Development Studies Institute, and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.